


in this kingdom by the sea

by Mia_Zeklos



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Again sort of, Beautiful Golden Fools, Bodyguard Romance, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period Drama meets Near Future Sci Fi meets regular GoT, Politics, Rated Mature for Later Chapters, Reincarnation, Slow Burn, but it's modern day Westeros, does it count as incest if they're not reborn as siblings? results inconclusive, high tech Westeros if you will, kind of sort of you know the drill, not an AU because it happens in Westeros, unveiling the secrets of your previous life: the fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_Zeklos/pseuds/Mia_Zeklos
Summary: When Jaime Ryswell, a soldier abruptly sent back to his homeland after an injury, is reassigned as personal guard to one of the contestants for the throne of the Crownlands, both he and the princess he's supposed to keep safe end up discovering more than they ever bargained for.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister
Comments: 23
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, friends!  
> This fic has been thumbling around in my head for so long that I'm honestly just glad to have it out there; the concept has been thought and rethought about twenty times by now, so I have an outline, but as usual, the chapter count is inconclusive depending on how the writing goes. The title is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's _Annabel Lee_. It's all a bit novel for me, given the genres it's going to combine, so I hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

King’s Landing – the jewel of the Crownlands, according to many a tourist guide and almost none of its actual citizens – is particularly disgusting on the day Jaime gets the worst news of his life. It’s cloudy and stifling, the way it always is when it rains on an otherwise hot summer day and the air smells like fish and seawater and it’s all far, far too much for his already overburdened senses.

It’s _home_ , and he’s never hated it more.

Ever since he’d been a child, he’d had this ritual; trying to freeze certain moments of his life into a perfect picture so that he can come back and look at them later. It had been solely reserved for any sliver of happiness he had been able to find, at first – a new toy, a good grade, the first time he’d rode a bike, the day he’d joined the army – but slowly, he had started incorporating it for different purposes, too. By now, it’s less about looking back at happiness and more about making sure that he can assess the emotion, no matter how exciting or devastating it is, once his head is clearer, and handle it before it destroys him.

It’s about to be one of those days, it seems; the kind he’d need to drown in amber in his mind to keep forever so that it can’t drown _him_ in turn.

“I’m sorry, Jaime,” Tyrion, the closest he’s had to a friend ever since aging out of the country’s tender care and occupying too many positions in his life for Jaime to count, says for what has to be the thousandth time today. “Everyone says you’re going to make a complete recovery and I’m overjoyed to hear that, but there’s no way they’re going to let you go back to field work day in day out with a history of an injury like this.”

He’s _fine_ , Jaime wants to insist, despite all the evidence that points otherwise. His arm had been out of its cast for days now and even though it still aches and he’s still tentative every time he tries to do anything more strenuous than holding a pen with it, he had hoped that eventually, he would put it all behind him. A shot directly through the palm of his hand would surely not be enough to stop what should have been a lifelong career in the only place he’d ever felt at home.

But this particular piece of news had been broken to him with varying degrees of gentleness countless times over the past week and when he snaps back, it’s as irritated as it’s hopeless. “You said that over the phone already. Why call me all the way here if there’s nothing more I can do?”

“Because I’m a social worker, not your carrier raven. And I do have something for you.” He taps at the screen of his tablet a few times, giving him yet another gauging look. From anyone else, it would have been exasperating, but this is Tyrion – the same Tyrion who always has an exit strategy in mind – and Jaime feels hope unfurl in him, bruised and reluctant but _alive_. “You mentioned to me years ago that if there had been a vacant spot, you might have gone for the Queen’s guard.”

“ _Is_ there a vacant spot?” He had been in Essos for so long that a lot of the news back from Westeros – any country in Westeros, up to and including his own – had started slipping away eventually. As far as he remembers, the monarch’s sworn guards are in it for life – either their own or that of the monarch in question, whichever ends first. “Who died and made me an option?”

The stifled laugh that follows feels like a small victory, as any reaction from Tyrion’s general direction always does. “No one as of right now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an interesting prospect there. The members of the Queen’s guard are burdened with the care of all of the castle’s inhabitants, even if they have their own protégés they’re assigned to, so no, it’s not the Queen herself I have in mind; it’s a Princess.” He leans in over his desk, lowering his voice as if there’s someone else around to overhear them. “It’s just a little too early for us to be able to tell for sure yet, but with a little luck, it’s _the_ Princess.”

~.~

A long time ago – _centuries_ ago, from what little Jaime remembers of his history classes back in school – the monarchy had been absolute and the country that the Crownlands is now had spanned the entire continent. An even _longer_ time ago, every region of Westeros had been split into its own nation and the fragile union had lasted some three hundred years before cracking apart again. The North had been the first to separate itself from the rest, but over the decades, it had gradually become clear that each kingdom would be more efficient on its own. The trade deals and inter-continental routes had remained, but each of the seven regions had eventually returned to its independence. Somewhere along the line – before the split, even, perhaps – the king or queen of the Crownlands had started being an elected position rather than one handed down from a ruler to their direct offspring.

It had been a slow process, from what he knows, but in the end, it had resulted in a rather public, nation-wide election, with the potential future rulers being observed by both the monarch and their people for years on end before a choice could be made. When the current Queen had decided that it was time for her to start screening for her potential successor, Jaime had still been almost a child – as had the princes and princesses themselves _. The majority of them don’t have the blood of the old nobility, so their titles are gifted to them by the Queen_ , one of his teachers had said, _but they’re never just anyone either._ She had been a good-natured woman and even then he had known that she hadn’t meant anything by it, but the message had been clear all the same. _Don’t even think of trying_.

Even back then, Jaime hadn’t been a particularly ambitious person, but even the most stubborn, goal-oriented of his fellow orphans had had no desire to have a go at something like this. To this day, the image of the children – twelve in total, six girls and six boys – waving their parents goodbye as they’d been herded into the Red Keep is stuck behind his eyelids every time he sees the Queen smiling benevolently through a screen. He’d lost his parents when he’d been too young to remember anything about them but a vague feeling of warmth followed by sudden terror and then everlasting loss, and the idea of sending a child – his own or any of the younger ones back at the big, crowded government-issued house he’d spent his childhood in – away so that they would be prepared for a position they had the tiniest chance of being chosen for is unthinkable; the idea of being in the rulers place and keeping them in the castle for years until they’d be ready to be chosen or sent away – even more so.

If he’s being entirely fair – which Jaime prefers not to be when it comes to any of the royal proceedings – the Red Keep, even if it doesn’t provide access to ultimate power, does at least serve as a great launch pad for its inhabitants. Unless they’d got themselves tangled up in a serious – and public – scandal, they would all end up with a comfortable position in the army, the court or the parliament, and few would go back to their regular lives from before. The fact that some of them had already been sent away and the choice had been narrowed down to only the best and more promising is yet another reminder of how long he’d spent shut off from this side of the world. He had thrown the last seven years of his life at war camps and battlegrounds and negotiations with every country that could potentially threaten the one he’d grown up in, and he had never even seen the face of the potential Queen he would sign his life away to.

“You haven’t missed as much as you think,” Tyrion says on their ride to the castle. In the relative privacy of the car, separated as they are from the driver, it’s easy to gear himself up for just how _big_ this might end up being should he accept. “This is your charge – if you agree, that is. Cersei Hardwicke. Her father is the Lord of Sharp Point, so she’s got better ties to the royal family than any other contender; she was Her Majesty’s pet project long before she entered the castle, which meant that she would always end up within the final three. Now that the Queen is actively thinking of retiring as soon as she finds a replacement and the public opinion is starting to sway towards Miss Hardwicke, too, the chances of the nation suddenly losing her to an unexpected case of bullet through the skull have skyrocketed, so it’s been agreed upon that she requires personal protection. I’ve worked with the royal family before. When you told me you’d been discharged, I recommended you immediately. It’s not what you wanted,” he says and for all of a moment, Jaime feels eighteen again, fresh out of his home and sent out into a world he has no clue how to navigate, with Tyrion as his only guiding light. “I know. But it’s better than most places could offer you.”

“I know,” he echoes, forcing himself to look away from the kind, all-knowing green eyes he knows so well by now. Being read so easily still stings, even if the man in front of him is the only person capable of it. “Let me read that,” he says, reaching towards the tablet and the article on the Princess he’d apparently already been assigned to. “I want to see what I’m getting into.”

~.~

Tyrion leaves him in front of the castle.

"This is as far as I can take you," he says, almost in apology, but Jaime can see right through him - despite the fact that to him, it looks like he's being thrown to the wolves, his social worker slash only friend is _excited_ for this. "From here on, the security is as tight as it can get. The Kingsguard will get you to the princess."

"All right." He still feels a little dazed, as if nothing of this is actually happening to him - for a few frantic moments, he thinks he's going to wake up back in Essosin the middle of the warzone he'd been evacuated from, with nothing to look forward to but another battle. The sudden, eerie calm that reigns right in front of the centuries-old gates of the Red keep is almost as disorienting as the transition back home had been. "Thank you, Tyrion."

"Keep me updated," he offers in lieu of a response and Jaime almost makes to leave before it occurs to him to ask what had been on his mind ever since he'd heard the announcement of his potential new position.

"Tyrion!"

He looks so innocently interested that Jaime can't help but be suspicious. "What is it?"

"Why me?" All he gets is a questioning look. "You must have other projects; why did you offer it to me?"

"Just an inkling." Tyrion pats his arm conspiratorially, like that's supposed to mean anything at all. "Trust me on that one."

And he does, of course. He does, like he always has.

~.~

The Red Keep is a ridiculous place.

Ever since he'd been a child, whenever the news they'd watched on TV had taken them to the royal palace, he had found it archaic and overly confusing, with its labyrinths and added buildings over the years; the flippantly modern new wing with its cutting edge technology and the old bits and pieces from a castle changed and destroyed and built a new time and time again, renovated year after year so that its original dubious glamour could be preserved, all mashed into a building that hadn't seemed to want to work with each other at all.

It's no different when he's on the inside looking out.

"The contestants for the crown are housed in the original western wing," one of the guards explains to him before mercifully pointing him down the corridor he needs to head down. "Their names are engraved on labels next to the doors. I'll let you get acquainted with your charge on your own."

"Thank you." He's not particularly grateful, but it's likely for the best - what kind of guard would need his own escort to meet the likely-to-be-crown princess?

The man flashes him an encouraging smile before turning on his heel. "Good luck."

 _I hope I don't need it_ , Jaime thinks fleetingly before he starts scanning the names written next to each door. It's all hopelessly impersonal, though not too different from the home he'd grown up in - state-issued, soulless rooms with little to no personality unless you decide to come in and see the life that the poor parentless fool inside had built for themselves. When he gets to the one he's likely going to spend the last few months guarding ( _Cersei Hardwicke_ , the label says in painstakingly perfect cursive) Jaime braces himself and takes a deep breath before finally knocking.

"Coming!"

 _Oh_.

She sounds--familiar. Worse - she sounds familiar in a way no one ever had, with one exception; the same exception that had left him on the Red Keep's doors not half an hour ago.

The lock turns and the door flies open before he'd had the time to fully process anything about what is going to follow - whatever that is. He knows and doesn't know and the world layers itself time and time again before finally snapping back into focus, right as the princess faces him, looking about as overwhelmed as he suddenly feels.

"Hello," she breathes out, a tentative smile blooming on her face even when he doesn't move. She looks exactly like she had in her file - long blonde hair, braided out of the way at the top, eyes more startlingly green than any he's ever seen, slight built, black dress shirt tucked into an equally black skirt - and it's everything he had expected and nothing like the way he remembers her. When had he seen her last? It had to have been that footage of the contestants's first entrance in the Red Keep, but no, she'd been a child then. It feels like a more recent memory, somehow, than the one has of her as an adult. "Are they done with the background check already? Those usually take ages. I'm Cersei, but I suppose you know that already."

Oh, he knows all right. From what he can see, she must, too - he's a stranger to her, as she is to him, but there's an unmistakable familiarity in her eyes.

 _Why me?_ He had wondered. Tyrion's non-answer had been as frustrating as everything else since the day he'd returned to Westeros, but he understands now.

_Just an inkling._

"Yes, I know." He holds out his hand and finally feels it; the way a soldier is supposed to when boarding off the plane back into their homeland. _Home at last._ "I'm Jaime." He clears his throat, doing his best to compose himself into what a princess would likely expect from a personal guard. “Jaime Ryswell. I’ve been assigned to you, starting today.”

He remembers this, too – the rare smile that blooms and lights up her entire face; the one he’d never seen before. “I know.” She waves him in with a grand gesture. “Welcome to the Red Keep, Jaime.”

Yes, this must be it, he thinks, still under the same spell that had taken over him ever since he’d heard her name for the first time today. _Home_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say? These poor kids deserve a quick filler chapter of getting to know each other before I officially throw them off the deep end. Again.  
> Hope you guys enjoy it and feedback is most welcome!

It's startlingly easy; getting used to life at the Red Keep.

At first, Jaime had been sceptical about it. After the years spent in overstuffed bedrooms, surrounded by people on all sides, first in the home he'd been assigned to and then in the army, he had never had the chance to get used to the unbearable stillness and quiet that the palace can offer him. There really aren't that many people here at all - there's the Small Council, the Queensguard and the Queen herself, all of them manning the state together from its administrative centre, but all their family - the royal family included - are scattered within the country, micromanaging other regions as they'd been assigned to. There are the princesses, too - all three of them, and all without their families - and their guards, as well as a skeleton crew of cleaners and ladies in waiting; all people who either do the housework or nothing at all, depending on how far within the inner hierarchy of this place they'd managed to move. Put together, there can't be more than about two dozen people in total in a castle that looks like it could house two hundred - and it had, once, from what he'd heard.

It's easier these days. Jaime's own world is even narrower than that - it's limited to his sleeping quarters and wherever the princess he'd been assigned to goes, which is rarely far. Her schedule had been easy to get used to - she gets up before sunrise, does who-knows-what for about two hours, calls for breakfast, attends the meetings of the Small Council, eats lunch, sorts through her correspondence for the good part of the afternoon with great care of the international relations that must be involved, participates in the evening briefing projected on every television screen in the Crownlands (and the rest of Westeros, likely, for all he knows - an elective monarchy with decades-long elections can be quite the show if you're not used to it, he supposes), takes her dinner and retreats back to her rooms early into the evening.

It's a routine like any other. Different from what he'd been used to before, but not too different - he's still dependent on others and his days never quite belong to him, but Jaime can't find it in him to protest. There's a curious kind of peace in this. In the long weeks of his recovery, he'd felt terribly aimless with no schedule whatsoever to follow and finally, there's a new base for him to build his life on, no matter how repetitive and limited it is. He'd been well aware of what he'd signed up for when he'd first agreed to this job.

It's in this exact lull - the false sense of security that Cersei's schedule had provided - that her first free day comes and shifts the still waters that his life seems to have become.

He notices it early in the morning, when he walks up to her door to summon her for breakfast and finds the numerous lock of her door still in place.

"Cersei?"

No answer. For a moment, he wonders if he's misspoken, but it can't be that - at the very beginning, she'd asked him to call her by her first day instead of picking one of the numerous honorifics he could have settled on instead.

The doubt is followed by a sharp stab of fear. It's irrational, as nothing can get past this lock, or they'd have assigned her a guard at a night shift, too - or there would have been signs of someone struggling to get in, if they'd managed it - and Jaime pushes it down as he rings the small bell by the door instead of calling out again.

This time, there's a response. "In a moment!"

It sounds less lively than she usually is by this time of the day, as if she'd only just woken up, and sure enough, less than five minutes later, the complicated cogs and wheels inside the door spring to life and the princess emerges with clothes more uncomplicated than anything he'd seen her in so far, hair pulled to the back in two braids tied to each other with a bow, and an woven picnic basket hanging on one forearm.

"Uh," he greets, less than prepared for the sight he'd been faced with. "Good morning?"

"It's my day off." She takes pity on him, closing and locking the door behind her back. Jaime follows her down the corridor towards, he assumes, the kitchens - she'd have to fill her empty luggage with something for them to eat, if this truly is meant to be a picture perfect rest, which he doesn't doubt about in the slightest. Everything the princesses do - on the clock or in their limited free time, doesn't really matter - is picture perfect, with every aspect of their lives being made an example of for anyone who watches. It makes sense, in a way, seeing as one of them is going to be the country's future leader, but it still feels altogether too invasive for his tastes. "This means I can either go out in the city and socialise or spend it in the gardens and do whatever I see fit. This time, it's going to be the latter."

He would rather die than say it out loud - he's too good at what he does to admit to any worry - but Jaime is quietly relieved at the news. He can guard her just fine outside in King's Landing, but it's far more comforting to know that there's not going to be any threat on her life today no matter what she chooses to do. It's strange, how quickly he'd come to associate the Red Keep with safety, but he welcomes the sensation with open arms. The sense of safety had been sorely missing from his life for too many years for him to count.

"So what is it going to be?" She throws him a questioning look over her shoulder as they enter the kitchens and Cersei waltzes past the staff, greeting them and snatching away anything she fancies at the same time. "What is it that you'll do in the gardens?"

"Read, likely." She'd brought no book, from what he can see, or any device at all, and she smiles back at his confusion. "Or socialise anyway. just not with my future subjects."

From anyone else's mouth, it might have sounded cocky or overconfident, but with Cersei, it feels like nothing but the truth. It's what she'd been born to do; Jaime knows it with the same certainty that has followed him through life, usually reserved only for the world's simplest, most obvious facts. The sky is blue, it snows in winter, and Cersei will be queen. It's part of the natural order of things, almost.

"I'm not following."

"You’d better." The play of words doesn't escape him and Jaime allows himself a snort, his heart stuttering over itself for a moment when she beams at him in response, smile much brighter than any he'd seen her offer during the briefings to the subjects in questions. "I'm about to show you the part of the palace you've never been to."

~.~

The food is good. It's better than what he usually has, but it's got nothing to do with the princesses receiving higher quality than the guards, he assumes, considering that Cersei had picked everything up seemingly haphazardly. It's either that her taste is better than the one of whoever it is that decides what the menu for the day is or that he's sitting on the grass by a fountain with the sun streaming over the both instead of the mess hall that he's already so used to.

They're alone. He supposes that this week, the other two competitors had picked King's Landing as an option, or perhaps they all have their hiding places, but what feels like hours has passed by the time Jaime realises that they haven't seen another living soul since they'd arrived here.

"It's an old place," Cersei shrugs when he asks, eyes straying away from the calm, endlessly cycling water in the fountain. "Something keeps drawing me to it. Ever since the first day I arrived, I felt as if I'd been here before. I hadn't, obviously - my family were close to the Queen since before I was born, but we'd never come to King's Landing before and I'd never seen the Red Keep from the inside, but it was still— I think you felt it too," she adds and suddenly, it's as if she's looking right Jaime and into some part of him that he hadn't even been aware had existed. "When you came to meet me. It's stupid and I can't explain it, but it happens."

"I know what you mean." Whatever it is, she's definitely not alone in it. He'd had glimpses of it before - their home's visits to the Riverlands when he'd been little, a little of Dorne when they'd passed through it during his deployment - but it had rarely been as intense as it had started being ever since he'd arrived in King's Landing. The fact that the Red Keep had started feeling like a home quite so quickly doesn't escape him. "It's called—"

"I know what it's called," she interrupts him with the same wounded tone she seems to adopt when she's being underestimated, "but it's stronger than that. I feel like _something_ happened here, but I haven't been able to figure it out in the years I've lived here. I suppose there were records of the important meetings in the capital before Seven Kingdoms fell apart, but most of it burned down during the Targaryen attack all those years ago.” Her smile is back, this time a little more pensive. “Pity. My namesake was the one on the throne right before that; from what I’ve heard, she was diligent about paperwork. Or, well, what could be considered paperwork in the Middle Ages.”

“Figures.” When she raises her eyebrows in obvious question, Jaime does his best to backtrack. “That you’re named after a queen, that is. Typical for nobles.”

“You’re not counting yourself as a part of that group, then.” It’s a statement; not anywhere near as weighty as he would have expected it to be from someone as far up the food chain as she is.

“I’m an orphan, so no, definitely not. It’s fine,” he waves her off when he sees her delicate features crumple into the sort of distress he’s seen countless of times by now. He’s heard it enough and the sentiment is more than clear on her face. “It was a long time ago. I barely remember them.” It’s curious, the way that loss sometimes feels – curious and terribly lonely as if at some other point, a far longer time ago, he’d had someone to share that grief with. It’s there again; that same sensation that his princess had described just a while ago. _I felt as if I'd been here before_. So had he, even if it had been all so terrifyingly new and confusing to his four-year-old mind. “Your family sounds a lot more interesting.”

“My parents _are_ devoted to history,” she concedes, one hand fidgeting with a clover while the other rummages in her basket for what little is still left. “And they’ve always been ambitious; my father started discussing whether they’d start preparing me for the crown when I was seven.” Another one of those fleeting grins. “ _Figures_. I guess that’s why they picked her. She was _the_ Queen, though; the first and the last on the Iron Throne. Didn’t have too good of an end, but then again, queens rarely do, do they?”

“I suppose not.” The conversation had taken a rather morbid turn altogether too quickly and Jaime steers it as gently as possible in a slightly less bleak direction. “But that’s what I’m here for. You can be one of the rare ones.”

“Funny you should mention that.” There’s nothing particularly funny about it, but Jaime refrains from saying so. “The Queen I was telling you about? The Lord Commander during her time—”

“Miss Hardwicke?”

They both whip around to look for the source of the interruption and Jaime squashes down the irritation that rises up in response. It’s the governess because _it always fucking is_ , and he’s got the sneaking suspicion that she’d been watching them for a while. Even on days off, sitting in the gardens for hours on end unchaperoned with still relatively strange men is a less than appreciated activity. _Talk about Middle Ages._

“Over here,” Cersei calls out, the ease draining out of her as easily as it had seemingly possessed her this morning. Just like that, with nothing but a name, the princess is back. “Stick around,” she says to him, smile still frozen in her other guardian’s general direction, and Jaime nearly laughs – even if he’d had any plans of pulling away, there’s little chance of anything of the sort now. “I’ll have to tell you about it later.”


End file.
